Class War Quotes
The major problem at the time was not the capitalist in the industrial revolutionary sense of the word as there was little industry. China as an agrarian society but the vast majority of the land was owned by relatively few wealthy families. It was close to a feudal system and that was the target for the Communists and their revolution. There was a very small proletariat. Their methods were brutal, but they executed the landlords and the class warfare ended quickly. Sun Yat-sen was not able to solve the land problem, nor was Chiang Kai-shek as most of his major supporters were landowners of warlords who controlled the landowners.
Vladimir Lenin
Lincoln had instituted the first draft in American History and it was terribly resented by many Americans. The draft laws allowed the wealthy and upper middle class to avoid service by paying a $300 fee of hiring a substitute just like in the Vietnam War the upper classes could get College Draft deferments. The mob led mostly by poor Irish, began by protesting the draft; then they attacked the mansions and houses of the wealthy; and then they went after Blacks. The Irish poor feared large numbers of Negroes coming out of slavery and competing for their jobs and lowering the prevailing wages. Blacks were beaten and lynched and 5,000 almost half of the then Negro population were driven to Brooklyn, New Jersey and the New York suburbs. It was the worst riot in United States History.
Mengustu seized power in a coup. However his Marxist Dictatorship was very unpopular and a civil war soon started. The poorly armed opposition used guerrilla warfare insurgency techniques. Since the government was hated by most people there was much support for the guerrilla in the villages and countryside. Mengustu adopted a policy of genocide. The areas of the country which were sympathetic to the revolutionaries were then systematically starved by the government withholding food and attacked by allies who he armed.
